Travel: Michelle Jana Chan & Sara Wheeler, Guest: Hugh Thomson

Beginning with classic techniques and examples of the most evocative travel writing, this course will bring participants bang up to date with the latest developments in the genre and explore ways and means of working as a travel writer now. Taught by an prize-winning author and Travel Editor at Vanity Fair, the course is aimed at participants of all levels.

Michelle Jana Chan is Travel Editor at Vanity Fair and the BBC’s Global Guide on The Travel Show. She is also the Telegraph Travel’s Asia Expert and their Action Packed columnist. Her writing includes stories about the origins of man around Kenya’s Lake Turkana, competing in the Peking to Paris vintage car rally, summiting Mont Blanc, and sailing across the Great Australian Bight on the HMB Endeavour. Michelle cut her teeth as a reporter for Newsweek magazine in New York and Beijing, followed by long nights as a news producer for CNN International. www.michellejanachan.com @michellejchan

Sara Wheeler is a prize-winning non-fiction writer. Her books include the international bestseller Terra Incognita, which tells the story of a seven-month journey in Antarctica. The Daily Telegraph reviewer wrote of it, ‘I do not think there will ever be a better book written about the Antarctic.’ Other books include The Magnetic North: Notes from the Arctic Circle (winner of the Banff Adventure Travel Prize), and Access All Areas: Selected Writings, 1990-2010. Sara is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Contributing Editor of The Literary Review and a Trustee of The London Library. She contributes to a wide range of publications in the UK and US and broadcasts regularly on BBC Radio.

Hugh Thomson has written many acclaimed travel books, including The White Rock and Cochineal Red about Peru, as well as Nanda Devi, a journey to a usually inaccessible part of the Himalaya. His memoir Tequila Oil: Getting Lost in Mexico was serialised by BBC Radio 4. For The Green Road into the Trees, he returned to Britain to write about his own country. It won the inaugural Wainwright Prize for Best Nature and Travel Writing. For the sequel, One Man and a Mule, he decided to have ‘a South American adventure in England’ by taking a mule across the North of England.

A Travel Writing Bursary is available for one place on this course.

Please note that Horatio Clare was originally scheduled to tutor this course, but had to cancel due to unforeseen circumstances.